This program was produced for broadcast on the 40th anniversary of the world premiere of Ionisation, a percussion work by Edgar Varese. Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted that performance, reminisces about the event with David Cloud of KPFK. Recorded on March 6, 1973. Varese's music was one of the first pieces in Western Classical music history performed solely on percussion instruments. Using a variety of conventional (snare drum, bass drum) and unconventional sources (sirens, Lion's roar), the music shocked audiences in the early 1930s but later became a classic of a budding genre that is the equivalent for drummers of the string quartet for fiddlers. The late David Cloud, a native of Alabama and then-Music Director of KPFK in Los Angeles, was a specialist in the music of maverick American composers and later a sound recordist for the UCLA Music Department.

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